If you’ve been out to eat recently, you’ve probably noticed that you’re tipping more than you are used to. Survey results released this month by Talker Research indicate that Americans have been spending $450 in guilt-induced gratuity every year.
This is part of a phenomenon that has been termed “tipflation.”
“Tipping requests have been around for a long time, but the surge began pretty much right with the pandemic, because that's when we decided to use the digital payment process a lot more than before,” said Professor Ismail Karabas, assistant professor of marketing at Murray State University in a recent phone interview with Fox News Digital. “All of these requests are coming through those digital payment systems,” known as Point of Sale (POS) devices.
Some of these devices allow staff at restaurants to present tablet screens to customers with various tip options at establishments where tipping was not typically expected, such as counter-service fast food restaurants. At some of these locations, employees receive minimum wage or higher, while sit-down restaurant workers often receive lower wages since they are considered tipped workers.
“A tipped employee engages in an occupation in which he or she customarily and regularly receives more than $30 per month in tips. An employer of a tipped employee is only required to pay $2.13 per hour in direct wages if that amount combined with the tips received at least equals the federal minimum wage,” explained the U.S. Department of Labor. “If the employee’s tips combined with the employer’s direct wages of at least $2.13 per hour do not equal the federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.”
For these workers, receiving at least 20% in tips per ticket can be crucial for making ends meet.
“Everything hinges on tips: your mood, your ability to pay your rent, your self-esteem. Sometimes, a great tip turned everything around for me,” said Susannah Breslin in a 2018 article for Forbes. “It was hard work, hauling your plates back and forth. It was messy work, scraping your chewed-on bones into the garbage can. It was demanding work, trying to figure out what you wanted when sometimes you didn’t even look up and see who I was.”
She stressed that customers should tell employees if they have an issue with their service rather than trying to make their point with a scanty tip.
While paying tipped workers appropriately is important, the aforementioned new expectations for tipping have been making customers a bit stressed. According to the Talker Research survey of 2,000 American consumers, the average respondent spent nearly $40 per month reluctantly on tips due to “pressure or awkwardness” related to tip options presented to them.
More than a quarter (26%) said they feel they are always or often forced to tip more than they would like. More than half (56%) said the pressure to tip higher is a regular occurrence.
This February, Audacy reported on a salon that suggested a 90% tip on a $15 haircut. Last November, we also reported on a woman who said she accidentally tipped $7,000 on a $7.54 Subway sandwich – she believes it was due to an accident related to the POS screen.
Nearly half of the Talker Research survey respondents said they felt that tipping options increased during the previous month, and 31% said they were asked to tip for a service they wouldn’t normally have considered tipping for in recent weeks. Gen Z and millennials felt the pressure to tip more than Gen X and baby boomers at 16% compared to 9% and 5%.
Some consumers even feel guilty when there isn’t a clear recipient of their tip.
“Tipping pressure doesn’t always need a human presence it seems – 23% of all those surveyed said they would likely leave a tip for service that required no human interaction, such as a vending machine or a self-checkout kiosk at the grocery store,” said Talker Research.